Black Population

By Kevin Thomas and Kevin Thomas,Evening Sun Staff Larry Carson contributed to this story | February 22, 1991

When the Rev. Emmett C. Burns started the Rising Sun Baptist Church in southwest Baltimore County seven years ago, he held services in an elementary school classroom. It was big enough for his parishioners -- seven of them. But now Burns counts 500 members among his flock and services are held in a new $1 million tabernacle on St. Lukes Lane, the first black Baptist church along the Liberty Road corridor.The growth of Burns' church is part of the changing face of Baltimore County as revealed this week by the 1990 census.

With the first decade of the 21st century having drawn to a close, Baltimore is on the verge of a major demographic development. For the first decade since the city's population decline began some 60 years ago, white flight is not the leading cause of the decrease in the number of residents - black flight is. According to the most recent census estimates, since 2000 the number of non-Hispanic whites in the city has declined by about 7,000,...

Carolann Morgan knows that 10 years ago, she would not have been able to make a success of her business. Today, her African-American art store, Carolann Art Gallery & Frame Shop, is thriving in Savoy Plaza shopping center on Liberty Road. Morgan attributes her success to the wave of black families that have moved in along the Liberty Road corridor from Randallstown to Lochearn during the past decade. "I know businesses that started back in the '80s and '90s, and they actually folded," Morgan said.

BRYANS ROAD -- South Hampton is a pristine development with an all-American vibe: The townhouses and single-family homes have tidy green lawns and blossoming trees out front; there are a tennis court and a playground, and the black and white families who live here look after each other. So it was a shock when residents awoke one day last August to find that cars, homes and a mailbox had been defiled with racist graffiti. Vandals had spray-painted whole sides of cars, shattered car windows and written "KKK" on houses.

A diligent student of thousands of newspapers, census data and court documents from 19th century Baltimore has painted a previously undocumented view of slavery in the city during the pre-Civil War years.In an unusual book, Ralph Clayton, who heads the Central Enoch Pratt Free Library's microfilm department, sketches a Baltimore in which, during the decade immediately before the Civil War, slavery was waning fast.His research clearly confirmed that this breakdown was occurring not necessarily because of a widespread change in the moral concerns of whites, who had owned and traded in slaves almost from Maryland's beginnings as a colony.

As the nation's Asian population more than doubled and the Latino population grew by more than 50 percent, the white population declined by almost 3 percent as a percentage of the whole, according to figures released Sunday by the U.S. Census Bureau. In the same period, the American Indian population grew by nearly 38 percent and the black population grew by just over 13 percent.For the first time since the turn of the century, the census bureau has reported, there are more black people living in the southern United States -- just under 53 percent -- than in the rest of thecountry.

Because Maryland has so few Hispanics and Asians, relatively speaking, it's noteworthy that a new Census Bureau survey found that their numbers have been increasing here sharply over the past five years. But the real significance in this mid-decade statistical snapshot? It's the story it tells about African-Americans. Half the growth in the state's population since 2000 is because of the increase in the number of black Marylanders. They made a much bigger difference than any other racial or ethnic group.

Charging the redistricting of Annapolis violated the city's own rules, two residents are challenging the new map in court.Bertina Nick and Michael T. Brown filed a request for an injunction Friday in Anne Arundel Circuit Court to stop the city from enforcing its new ward lines, just a few months before the September primary.In their five-page complaint, the two plaintiffs accuse Mayor Alfred A. Hopkins and the City Council of failing to follow proper procedures at a public hearing on the redistricting plan January 1992.

Calling the redistricting of Annapolis biased and unfair, black leaders are heading to court to challenge the new map approved by the City Council.Michael T. Brown, chairman of the Annapolis Democratic Central Committee, vowed to sue after the council killed an amendment that would have created a third majority black ward.Instead, the council voted, 7-1, Monday night to redraw ward lines to increase the black population in two existing majority districts and slightly reduce the black population of a third.

Baltimore's white population declined by almost 60,000 over the past decade while its black population grew only slightly, leaving the city 59.2 percent black in 1990, the U.S. Census Bureau reported yesterday.The figures came as a modest surprise to city planners, who had projected that Baltimore -- which was 54.8 percent black in 1980 -- would top the 60 percent mark this decade.Maryland's black population grew by almost one-quarter over the past decade, spurred by an influx of blacks into the Washington suburbs.

Because Maryland has so few Hispanics and Asians, relatively speaking, it's noteworthy that a new Census Bureau survey found that their numbers have been increasing here sharply over the past five years. But the real significance in this mid-decade statistical snapshot? It's the story it tells about African-Americans. Half the growth in the state's population since 2000 is because of the increase in the number of black Marylanders. They made a much bigger difference than any other racial or ethnic group.

BALTIMORE HAS long been a Democratic bastion, but just how liberal is the city? Pretty darn liberal, according to a newly released study. Baltimore is the 14th most liberal city in the country, according to the study by the nonpartisan Bay Area Center for Voting Research in Berkeley, Calif. Among major cities -- those with more than 300,000 people -- Baltimore ranked as the sixth most liberal. The study examined 2004 presidential election returns for 237 cities with populations greater than 100,000.

CHICAGO - The Rev. Al Sharpton's presidential campaign, odd from its very beginning, has proved one thing: He can attract a lot of votes in black districts as long as the other candidates don't show up. Mr. Sharpton, who came in fourth in Michigan's Democratic caucuses on Saturday, finished a strong second in two black districts in Detroit. He was the only candidate to campaign vigorously in Detroit's black neighborhoods. At a forum in a prominent black Baptist church on the evening before the caucuses, for example, he was the only candidate to show up. Similarly, Mr. Sharpton carried the District of Columbia's black precincts in a straw vote a few weeks earlier, a process that does not result in sending any delegates to the party's national convention.

Carolann Morgan knows that 10 years ago, she would not have been able to make a success of her business. Today, her African-American art store, Carolann Art Gallery & Frame Shop, is thriving in Savoy Plaza shopping center on Liberty Road. Morgan attributes her success to the wave of black families that have moved in along the Liberty Road corridor from Randallstown to Lochearn during the past decade. "I know businesses that started back in the '80s and '90s, and they actually folded," Morgan said.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN political leaders didn't get all that they wanted in the governor's redistricting plan, but they appear to have fared better than they initially thought and now might drop their threats of a lawsuit. After a thorough look at Gov. Parris N. Glendening's map, members of the General Assembly's Legislative Black Caucus say they believe the plan will yield at least four new African-American legislators and perhaps as many as eight. Some black political leaders were hoping for a gain of 12 African-Americans in the Assembly, which would bring the total to 50. But several now say they believe the governor's proposal offers reasonable opportunities for black candidates.

Baltimore's loss of population in the past decade occurred across a swath of the city, with growth in only a small number of neighborhoods, mostly along the waterfront and in the northern part of the city, according to census data released yesterday. And although Baltimore County saw population declines in some places, particularly the older neighborhoods on the east side and some north-central areas, growth in the county was generally larger than expected, thanks in large part to extremely rapid gains in the west and northwest.

Annapolis could become the first jurisdiction in Maryland with its own sexual harassment law if the City Council approves the landmark legislation tonight.Two council subcommittees have endorsed the bill introduced by Alderman Carl O. Snowden, D-5th. Four others, including the three women on the council, have signed up as co-sponsors, paving the way for the bill's expected approval.Business leaders initially complained that the law was too broad and contained a vague definition of sexual harassment.

Baltimore's white population dropped by almost 40,000 from 1990 to 1994 while the number of black city residents nudged upward only slightly, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.The outflow of whites exceeded the relatively modest pace of the 1980s, the figures show, and approached the exodus of the 1970s, when nearly 12,000 whites a year left Baltimore.The bulk of the city's population loss was due to whites -- $H roughly 37,000 of them -- moving elsewhere. Deaths among the city's aging whites accounted for a small fraction of the decline.

Maryland became a bigger, more suburban and more racially diverse state during the 1990s. The first detailed returns from the 2000 census show that the flight of white and black families from the largest cities continued, draining Baltimore and Washington of hefty chunks of their populations. At the same time, thousands more families - largely white - kept on going. They left or leapfrogged the inner suburbs, leaving them less white and more racially diverse than ever before. They built their new homes in former cornfields of the outer ring of suburban counties, bringing more-crowded roads and schools to once-rural landscapes from Harford in the north to Calvert in the south.